26 mm Gregor Feindt / Anke Hilbrenner / Dittmar Dahlmann (eds.) The Editors Sport under Unexpected Gregor Feindt is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz. Anke Hilbrenner is professor for East European History at the Circumstances University of Göttingen. Dittmar Dahlmann is professor emeritus for East European Violence, Discipline, and Leisure in Penal History at the University of Bonn. and Internment Camps VERÖFFENTLICHUNGEN DES INSTITUTS FÜR EUROPÄISCHE GESCHICHTE MAINZ, BEIHEFTE BAND 119 This volume studies the irritating fact of sport in penal and internment camps as an important insight into the history of camps. The authors enquire into case studies of sport being played in different forms of camps around the globe and throughout the twentieth century. They challenge our under- standing of camps, question the dichotomy of insiders and outsiders, inner-camp hierarchies, and the everyday experi- ence of violence. Sport under UnexpectedSport Circumstances under Dahlmann (eds.) Dahlmann / Hilbrenner / Feindt Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz Abteilung für Universalgeschichte Herausgegeben von Johannes Paulmann Beiheft 119 Sport under Unexpected Circumstances Violence, Discipline, and Leisure in Penal and Internment Camps Edited by Gregor Feindt, Anke Hilbrenner, and Dittmar Dahlmann Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: https://dnb.de. © 2018, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Theaterstraße 13, D-37073 Göttingen This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – No Derivatives 4.0 International license, at DOI 10.13109/9783666310522. For a copy of this license go to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Any use in cases other than those permitted by this license requires the prior written permission from the publisher. Cover picture: Thomas Geve, Sport (Auschwitz I), 1945. Typesetting: Vanessa Weber, Mainz Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlage | www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com ISSN 2197-1056 ISBN 978-3-666-31052-2 Table of Contents Introduction Gregor Feindt / Anke Hilbrenner / Dittmar Dahlmann Between “Barbed Wire Disease” and Judenexerzieren: Why the History of Sport in Penal and Internment Camps Matters ....................... 9 Alan Kramer The World of Camps: A Protean Institution in War and Peace ................ 23 Section I Gregor Feindt / Anke Hilbrenner Camps as Nomos of Modernity? ................................................................... 43 Floris J.G. van der Merwe Sport in Concentration and Prisoner of War Camps during the Anglo-Boer War, 1899–1902 ....................................................... 49 Panikos Panayi Work, Leisure, and Sport in Military and Civilian Internment Camps in Britain, 1914–1919 ....................................................................................... 63 Christoph Jahr “We are pursuing sport because such work is not demeaning”: Forms and Functions of Sport in Internment Camps during the First World War ............................................................................ 87 Doriane Gomet Sport behind the Wire: Primarily a Life-Saving Exercise? ........................ 103 Section II Anke Hilbrenner Bodies in Camps between Destruction and Perfection .............................. 125 6 Table of Contents Felicitas Fischer von Weikersthal Between Coercion and Athletic Ambition: The Form and Function of Physical Culture in Soviet Forced Labour Camps .................................. 131 Kim Wünschmann Judenexerzieren: The Role of “Sport” for Constructions of Race, Body, and Gender in the Concentration Camps ......................................... 153 Veronika Springmann “He liked us, because we were good athletes, good workers” – Productive Bodies in Nazi Concentration Camps ...................................... 175 Section III Gregor Feindt Camps Producing Identity and Memory ...................................................... 193 Mathias Beer Sport in Expellee and Refugee Camps in Germany after the Second World War: Expressing Identity between Bačka and Stuttgart ................. 199 Marcus Velke Recreation, Nationalisation, and Integration: Sport in Camps for Estonian and Jewish DPs in Post-War Germany ......................................... 223 Dieter Reinisch Performing Resistance: Sport and Irish Republican Identity in Internment Camps and Prisons ..................................................................... 245 Conclusion Manfred Zeller Games of Transgression: Camp Sports and the Fate of the Body Modern .................................................................................................... 269 Contributors to this Volume .......................................................................... 279 Introduction Gregor Feindt / Anke Hilbrenner / Dittmar Dahlmann Between “Barbed Wire Disease” and Judenexerzieren Why the History of Sport in Penal and Internment Camps Matters In the afternoon we had to form up for parading. The older inmates called it “sport”. […] On the vast parade ground the sun was strong. Four SS-Scharführers waited for us, received us, especially those limping from being footsore. […] Just wait, we’ll wear you down! And then it was, double time, march.1 Sport in camps unsettles both contemporary witnesses and students of history. It seems impossible that human beings would perform anything like sport within the harsh camp reality of repression, hunger, violence, and possibly even murder. Yet, sport in penal and internment camps is a historical reality and studying this history allows for new insights into the reality of inclusion and exclusion in camps during the twentieth century. This volume will bring forward an understanding of camp experience that centres on subjectiv- ity, performance, and social action and aims at complementing the existing research on camps in the twentieth century with a comparative perspective of European history. Camps condense the history of violence throughout the twentieth century and mark off a genuinely violent age that for instance Zygmunt Bauman criti- cally called a “century of camps”.2 Camps for prisoners of war (POWs) and the internment of alien civilians appeared at the dawn of the twentieth century and gained broader significance during the two World Wars. Such “total institu- tions”3 confined thousands of human individuals in a small, tightly regulated space. The same spatial compression applies to the National Socialist concen- tration camps or the Stalinist Gulag system that merged forced labour with 1 Friedrich Maase, Archiv Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen/Stiftung Branden- burgische Gedenkstätten Jd 2/7, Bl. 68; cited in Veronika Springmann, “ ‘Sport machen’. eine Praxis der Gewalt im Konzentrationslager”, in Lenarczyk Wojciech et al. (eds.), KZ-Verbrechen. Beiträge zur Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager und ihrer Erinnerung (Berlin 2007), 92f. 2 Zygmunt Bauman, “A Century of Camps?”, in Peter Beilharz (ed.), The Bauman Reader (Oxford 2011), 266–280. See also Jörg Später, “Jahrhundert der Lager? Über Stärken und Schwächen eines Begriffs”, in iz3W 239 (1999), accessed 31 August 2017, URL: https://www.iz3w.org/zeitschrift/ausgaben/239_jahrhundert_der_lager/faa. 3 For the concept of “total institutions”, see Erving Goffman, Asylums. Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (Chicago, IL 1961). 10 Gregor Feindt / Anke Hilbrenner / Dittmar Dahlmann murder. Such violence was radicalised even more in extermination camps. In contrast to this, camps for displaced persons (DPs) or refugees lacked this radicalised violence but still strictly regulated the lives of their inhabitants. For many DPs, the camp was more than a transit station but was a long-time place of residence, often without a realistic perspective of moving on. Regardless of these specific and intriguing differences, camps as institutions central to the twentieth century induced experiences of violence, of an uncertain future, and total control exercised by both camp authorities and fellow internees. In the reality of camps, sport appeared in different settings and different modes of internment, and sport remained contingent. Depending on the specific conditions in a given camp, sporting activities could be – to various degrees – official or unofficial, intramural or extramural, restricted to one hierarchical rank of camp society or open to all, continuous or discontinuous to earlier experiences of those held in camps. Similar to other joyful activities such as music or theatre, sport was a paradox of leading a “social life in the unsocial environment” of camps.4 Moreover, the coercive qualities of sport varied with regard to the specific type of camp, the trajectory of internment, and the wider context of inclusion or exclusion. Many camps, especially Nazi concentration camps, adopted “doing sports” as a practice of violence. For instance, as quoted at the beginning of this chapter, SS (Schutzstaffel) men made use of punitive drills to weaken and torture camp inmates. Such “sport” was used to display an alleged racial hierarchy. Moreover it served as enter- tainment for guards and other camp personnel and obviously exceeded the common understanding of sport as “competitive activities regulated by set rules or customs”